Public money is typically reserved for public services. Things like roads, public safety and schools. But a proposal by outgoing Irvine Mayor Steven Choi looked to blur the lines between public and private schools.

“The city’s Planning Commission last month approved Crean Lutheran’s plan to add 25,600 square feet of classroom buildings and a weight room at the northeast corner of the school’s campus at Portola Parkway and Sand Canyon Avenue. The school has about 800 students with an enrollment cap of 1,200,” the Register reported. “Choi requested the city match the school’s fundraising effort to pay for the expansion up to $25,000.”

The City Council tabled the motion, noting that to offer the funding to only one private school seemed unfair, and, as the Register noted, “directed staff to return with information on Irvine private schools within the first three months of 2017 so they can make a better decision.”

To be sure, Choi’s proposal is similar to a program the city already employs for its public schools “by budgeting $1.5 million for the Challenge Match Grant program, which provides $1 for every dollar raised on behalf of Irvine students attending the Irvine, Tustin and Santa Ana unified school districts,” the Register wrote. But the council would have done better to just reject the motion entirely, as public money should not be doled out to private schools.

Crean Lutheran High School is a private school that operates on private money. To inject public money into it, or any other private school, would alter the meaning of public and private schooling.

Further, with government money often comes government strings. While we think it unlikely that the current council would do anything in that area, a future council could use such a relationship as an opening to make demands on private schools receiving the money on issues of curriculum, unionization or any number of other things.

That is hardly far-fetched. Remember that the city’s cozy relationship with its own school district has been used to score political points in the past, most recently over the placement of Irvine’s fifth high school.

Private schools exist as an alternative to public schools, and that comes at a cost.